“This is very foreign to us,” Jon Bon Jovi said to a crowd of some 900 fans who gathered at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall Monday night.
“It’s usually 65,000 people,” he elaborated, “or just us.”
The intimate event, sponsored by American Express with ticket sales benefiting New York hunger foundation City Harvest, featured a two-hour Q&A moderated by When We Were Beautiful director Phil Griffin and a handful of unplugged songs by Bon Jovi and a four-piece backing band.
Fans from the tri-state area flocked to NYC to attend the 25-year-old-band’s rare appearance, which was announced and sold to American Express cardmembers exclusively via Twitter.
Highlight performances of the night included “Livin’ On a Prayer,” “Superman,” “Whole Lot of Leaving,” (dedicated to guitarist Richie Sambora), a cover of Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah,” and new single “We Weren’t Born to Follow,” off the band’s latest record The Circle.
“We’ve tried to see the glass half-full,” Bon Jovi said, of his overwhelmingly positive songs. “From ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ to ‘Born to Follow,’ there’s been this theme of responsible optimism.”
Though the night focused on the meanings behind the music, Bon Jovi got jovial with the crowd at times, at one point asking them to “Be honest. Everyone here, when we said we were doing a country record, [thought]: ‘You motherf***er’.”
Following the performance and Q&A, audience members had an opportunity to ask questions, the most poignant being, “50 years from now, which song would [Bon Jovi] choose to be remembered by?”
“‘Prayer’ would probably be high on that list,” Jovi answered, after a moment of thinking.
He then looked down as if to say he changed his mind.
“I don’t know,” he added. “I’m not writing my epitaph yet.”
Check out a video of that response, along with some snapshots of the night, below.
poisonivyjones.wordpress.com 